Yes, that was also something I did not expect. But it was the same effect with the LilyPad Arduino and the Diecimila and I measured everything three times. No LEDs are connected to pins 2,3,4,5,6,7 (that's why I have choosen them). Please notice that I did measure the overall system power and not the power that goes only through the atmel chips.

Maybe someone else can do a measurement and verify my values? - I connected the power supply to the 5V and GND pins and disconnected everything else.

The question about the clock speed: The internal clock can be 1-8 MHz. Of course you can add external clock sources. Then 16MHz are no problem. The bootloader runs at 1MHz but I tested it with 8MHz at 115000baud and it works with a good selection of boards.

I'll try and test the duminalove on Saturday. I am heading to my University (I am at the University of Waterloo) then (a bunch of us forum members are holding our first Arduino meeting there). Hopefully I can get into an open lab and use one of their regulated lab power supplies to power the Arduino and monitor the power consumption.

Hi, I am very interested in your project using the ATTiny microcontrollers and the Arduino IDE. I have a project that might take advantage of the ATTiny85/84. I know your LumiNet project uses the ATTiny84 - would the same bootloader/IDE mods work with the 85 as well? They are very similar in their features, except the 85 can come in an 8-pin package (PDIP/SOIC, which is easier to prototype with). I haven't really decided which would be better for my application, and both come in the same MLF package, but I know I need the low voltage and low power consumption of the Tiny's (need to operate on one lithium cell down to <2.0V). My initial application would use just one chip, but I have other ideas for using small, cheap, low-power devices embedded in a wireless sensor network. Hopefully your work make it into the official release. These Tiny's are really perfect for battery-operated projects and being able to use the Arduino/Wiring language would make development that much quicker. Thanks and I look forward to your release of the bootloader and IDE!

the attiny85 is supported as well. I took some pictures, but you will have to wait until Monday I guess. I think the attiny84 is the better choice, I have one here in DIL14... the attiny85 has too few pins.But if this is sufficient for your application then my modified IDE can handle this chip, yes.

And now some great news for all windows users (mac and linux support will be added later):

I managed to add the FTDI BitBang bootloader upload process into my IDE.

So from now on it is possible to use the X3 pin header of the FTDI chip of the Arduino Diecimila as an ISP programmer (as descibed in the link above).

Of course this enables you to burn a bootloader to the Diecimila itself, but I burn the bootloader to my attiny84 powered LumiNet nodes with this hack.

@darudude: thanks for motivating me, the bit bang bootloader is really working well and you can select it like any other ISP programmer in my IDE.

Awesome!! Can't wait for the schematics and IDE to release. I'm gonna order some Attinys in anticipation

Also regarding the power usage. I seem to have some problems with by arduino (I think I blew the FTDI chip). So i couldn't program it to set pins high. I did put an empty chip in (IDLE program) and got about the same power usage as you did: ~30 mA.

I am going back to the university in a couple weeks. I plan on just doing power testing an Atmega 168 bootloaded with Arduino on beadboard. This should give a better comparison between power usage on Attiny84 and Atmega168

Update: FTDI BitBang tested with Mac OS X. It now works out of my IDE.

But I don't understand how to use the VCP driver and the D2XX driver at the same time on Mac OS. So right now the user must decide if her wants to upload sketches (using the VCP driver) or if he wants to burn the bootloader (using the D2XX driver).

But it is possible to use the FTDI BitBang hack for the Diecimila out of the IDE under Mac OS and Windows now and I used it to flash LumiNet nodes with it.

Thankx for the feedback.I am currently fine tuning the last parts and hope to release the files until the end of April.If there are any other features that you miss in the official Arduino IDE then please let me know, maybe I can include it in the LumiNet version.

How much would it take to get the TWI/I2C to work? I was looking at going with the ATTiny 25/45, but guess I could try 84/85. Or would it work for any in the ATtiny series? I'm just getting started with this whole arduino thing, so of course, the easier, the better.